


Black Sunflowers

by bee_bro



Series: an end of the world type bouquet [1]
Category: Half-Life
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Existential Angst, Fluff, Gen, Mute Gordon Freeman, Pre-Canon, Trans Gordon Freeman, content from pre rescas, gordon vs the multiple electric appliances that decide to break on him, his childhood was pretty good bcs i say so, idk a look at gordons childhood and the actual fun times at black mesa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29288673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bee_bro/pseuds/bee_bro
Summary: Dreamless sleep is the closest humans come to understanding death. By that logic, stasis isn't death at all.Because Gordon Freeman dreams.
Relationships: freehoun if you squint - Relationship
Series: an end of the world type bouquet [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2166411
Comments: 3
Kudos: 46





	Black Sunflowers

**Author's Note:**

> so i went to sleep with a fever, woke up at 6am, thought about this, went back to sleep, and now i'm too out of commission to do anything but write about gay people, so, here 
> 
> cw for unreality with this one

It starts with his mother, and then his mother’s ‘friend’ who was also his mother but not officially, and he knew he couldn’t talk about it in school because his mothers could get in trouble for being his mothers.

But they loved him and he loved them and there he is, all dressed up for first grade, about to be sent off to school with a bouquet of flowers for his homeroom teacher, which flowers, he doesn’t know, but they’re yellow, like his dress, which is new, very new, and in direct danger of getting rumpled to hell and back by the end of his first day at school.

He dreams of playdough and wooden letter blocks and about a kid in his class that hated frogs so much he cried when it was time to learn about amphibians for science class. Dreams about holding a playground bug in his clasped hand and freaking his classmates out with it enough to garner a reputation.

He doesn’t know he’s dreaming yet.

The record of his life skips and now he’s in middle school, figuring out how to tell his parents he might need glasses, pouring over spiderman comic books in the yellow light of his room, ducky-print curtains tinting the sunlight and dimming its rays. He shouldn’t be on his bed in sneakers but it makes him feel cool and rebellious even if no one’s around to see it, and of course he made sure to wipe the soles off before climbing onto the covers. There’s half-written valentines all over his desk, mixed in with finished but not yet double-checked math homework, and Peter Parker saves – not the day – but another life.

Gordon is falling. 

Gordon is falling in love for the first time, and he knows he’ll never do anything about it, because _that’s the_ _basketball captain,_ and Gordon’s just the leader of math club, and couldn’t it be any more cliché?

He’s in high school, a grade ahead of his peers and set to graduate a year and a half early, dragging around textbooks and hoping he’ll run into Jake Harvey, captain of the Golden Owls – a team mascot so polarly either hated or loved it’s perhaps the most widespread school inside-joke – who plays under the proud number 1- Gordon hopes they’ll run into each other and maybe Gordon will drop his books and maybe Jake Harvey will help pick them up.

This never happens, and by prom, Gordon’s well-settled with the idea that romances maybe aren’t _for him_. But the idea’s fun, and Gordon wastes hours flipping through the prom issue of Seventeen magazine with his best friend Sasha, who paints her toenails and draws fake tattoos all over her arm even though her parents don’t allow it. She’ll end up moving away to Ohio in a few months but neither know it yet. She knows he hates sequins and when they go shopping for outfits, she doesn’t push.

He doesn’t bring up why she’s got no prom date either, and so they go together as friends, dressed up, making his moms cry proud-parent tears. Neither dance, because that’s embarrassing, but they orbit the fruit punch and talk about star trek. Afterward, Sasha stays for a sleepover and doesn’t ask to use the landline to call her parents about it. Instead, they spend their time fruitlessly trying to wash the AquaNet out of Gordon’s hair. It doesn’t work, and two days of clumped hair later, his mom gives him the haircut he’ll end up keeping for the next five years.

_Gordon is falling-_

\- asleep in his mother’s 1991 Mazda, making the last drive to Massachusetts before he’s settled there for good. Quiet radio playing Bon Jovi’s It’s My Life for the third time in the last few hours, potted plant in his lap, kept safe from toppling over. As the chorus creeps on them, his mother starts singing and Gordon joins in singing- no, signing, no-

_this never happened_

\- that song didn’t come out until Gordon was already in university. His mother’s Mazda fell out of commission a year prior to this trip- he didn’t keep potted plants-

Gordon is falling asleep in his mother’s 1996 Lexus, making the last drive to Massachusetts before he’s settled there for good. Quiet radio playing If Wishes Came True for the third time in the last few hours, box of CD cases in his lap because it didn’t fit in the back. His mother sings along to it still, and he will miss her voice later, even if they’ll call back and forth for the next few years. The road lulls him back to sleep, repetitive mileposts marking their steady approach to the rest of Gordon’s life.

Gordon is falling off of the top bunk in his dormitory- except there is no floor the fall just continues and soon his room’s carpet flashes past then another room another he’s falling through the building through the ground and then it’s just darkness and nothing and he is awake-

Gordon is falling off the top bunk in his dormitory at 5:30 a.m. on his way to kill the alarm. He’s lucky to not have a roommate, cause the guy that was supposed to live with him got expelled a week in for arson. Gordon still sleeps on the top bunk though, so there’s less incentive to climb back into bed every morning. He has a good few hours before class and dresses quickly, regretting the cold and ready to jog it off as soon as he gets out the door. Three miles that he doesn’t feel pass and then he’s back- where was he just now? Jogging. Where? Where? Gordon opens his notes, he needs to study, they’re blank- they shouldn’t be, he’d been halfway through this notebook- words, words, highlighter, everything is okay-

Maybe it’s just the early morning, his brain isn’t awake yet- he needs coffee- Gordon stands and takes the few steps to his coffee machine, a dark blue beat-up old thing with half its buttons rubbed clean of labels. It whirrs and sputters and he waits patiently, switching from one leg to the other in his empty otherwise quiet room. His college dormitory room. Fifth floor, door 5-12C.

His room didn’t have a coffee machine-

He’s falling again, there’s darkness and he tastes pennies- Gordon lands upright in a lab- except he doesn’t, he’s been standing there for ten minutes now trying to figure out what’s broken. The- where is he- college- three weeks before exams- right- he needs the last few control trials for his paper and now the fucking hot plate’s refusing to work.

He’s running on three americanos and a bag of hot chips someone gave him, his tie’s on too tight, why do his hands shake- they didn’t- He pokes at the extension cord, fiddles with the settings- this is an electric issue. There’s other students around the lab, but Gordon’s not about to go ask anyone for help, he should just file an urgent repair request so Barney can-

_who is barney_

There is a memory he shouldn’t be seeing yet- because they need to go in order, they need to- Gordon isn’t falling, he is drifting in the welcome cold water of a swimming pool, deep underground near the Level 3 Dormitories- darkness- his eyes are closed, he knows the rules _, "No running", "No horseplay", "No food or drinks", "No smoking", "No glass containers", "No nudity”,_ he waits for Barney to finish changing- and then hears the patter of feet- a pause- fucker decided to jump in didn’t he- and a huge splash, sending Gordon upright so he doesn’t get water in his nose, already wheezing and wiping his eyes before they sting- it’s late, past everyone’s Black Mesa Bedtime but goddamn it, they’re adults, and since Barney already broke the no running rule in the empty pool they can break the whole no horseplay rule too.

Barney-

How did they meet?-

Something about a staff room- or a supply closet? Why can’t he remember? Maybe it’s just the early morning, maybe his brain isn’t functioning yet- he needs coffee- so he can remember-

He’s in a staff room, Black Mesa, in front of a coffee machine, dark blue, beat up, half its buttons rubbed clean off. He’s forgotten what buttons do what- right- the young security guard that made coffee before him seemed to know- Gordon should go ask- he’s not sure he’s ever met anyone named-

Barney-

-’s holiday break is shorter than Gordon’s and he doesn’t complain, because darlin’ what’s there for me to do with it? Play video games all day instead of just after shift?

He’d laughed, and Gordon spent his first hour off work looking at airplane listings in his dorm- and oh god, he’d poured three hours into this before even asking if this was something Barney wanted-

He takes the tram to Area 8 Topside Dormitories with his heart in his throat, buzzing with the potential of offering Barney a place to go for the allotted holidays that isn’t just back to his computer. Somewhere with snow. There is nothing outside of the tram windows.

“Ya sure about that?” Barney regards him with wide, surprised eyes, and Gordon’s nod seals the deal- if they wanna make it to the Freeman household and back in time, they need to start packing _today._ He doesn’t know what date it is. He doesn’t know when this happened-

His parents have a greenhouse now, and they joke it’s because after Gordon left, they need to take care of _something._ So now they grow all sorts of flowers and plants and vegetables, the tomatoes and 2 sunflowers are highlights of the little, heated room. His parents giggle behind Gordon and Barney’s back not too subtly, winking obscenely when they say he and Barney might have to share a room. They’re not missing any chances to hit all the tiles on their embarrassing parents bingo. They-

Time shifts again and speeds on, and Gordon wants to stay there- wants to see more of those few days they spent with homemade meals and cocoa and Barney’s first time seeing snow- he wants to stay and experience it how it’d happened- But time shifts right after he glances out the window and sees it’s not winter- there’s grass, they’re in a field- there is no sky-

It’s Gordon’s turn to drive from the airport. Radio blaring Bon Jovi’s It’s My Life for the third time in the last few hours, potted plant in Barney’s lap, kept safe from toppling over. A gift from the Freeman mothers. And as the chorus creeps on them, Barney starts singing, and Gordon drums along to it on the wheel- and when Losing My Religion comes on next, Barney almost topples the plant himself with how hard he bops along to it.

Gordon is falling- from where? in love? _No, right now, right now, you are falling right now-_ he knows this-

They return to Black Mesa.

Gordon works at Black Mesa. He knows this. He’s worked here for- how many years? It slips through his fingers, sand, his room doesn’t have windows but he _knows_ that if it did, it’d be dark outside. Not the nighttime kind. Not the power outage kind either- _empty-_ he knows this.

He is reassigned to a new job post. He will no longer work in the labs next to Eli and Isaac. He-

-looks around wildly, the halls are too clean, too uniformic even for Black Mesa, he can’t read any of the words- just like in a dream- he is in an H.E.V. suit- he will be for a long time- how does he- the crystal is delivered to Sector C's Anti-Mass Spectrometer. Sample GG-3883. This room should have a ceiling-

Gordon realizes he is dreaming as, two feet from the laser, he looks up. He knows he didn’t in real life. When this happened. But he looks up _now._ There is only void.

Something shatters in reality, pushed to breaking by the final realization of its faulty attempt at replaying his life’s beats. The orange room chips away and so does the orange of his suit, sucked into outer space- Void.

There is no sky. No source of light, just black stretching forever without direction. Gordon is in a field. Not like any he’s ever seen, there is no grass, only sunflowers just barely shorter than him, and he gets a sense- He Knows- they go on _forever._ He can only see ten feet all around but- he starts moving- the visibility stays the same but more flowers drift into view, tall and heavy with their heads all facing him- he spins around- the ones he’d just passed face him too- they follow him without visible movement. There is no sun. No sky. He is afraid that if he keeps walking, his radius of preternatural light will reveal a figure.

He’s been falling forever.

He just wants to go back to dreaming. He does not want to taste blood. He wants to go back to his and Barney’s holiday in Vermont. To his first time winning a huge stuffed toy at a fair- a fish. To learning how to make flower crowns from Sasha- that’s how they met, right? She knew sign language at- where did they meet? Black Mesa? No that was Barney and Eli and Isaac and other names, names, and ASL was a requirement for entry, which Gordon breezed right through instead of taking the 4 month intensive learning course-

Did they make it?

Did his friends make it?

What happened after the- everything?

Gordon is _gone_ , a state of sleep equivalent to death- 

The moment he thinks: I need to see them again- I need to _know-_

There is a figure.

Gordon stops. He’s been walking under the empty sky all this time. He’s been sleeping.

The flowers wilt, fall away, revealing no soil and only more of the same darkness, and a terribly familiar voice speaks:

Rise and Shine.

The copper in his mouth and the familiar aroma of sunflowers is replaced by the terrible, invasive smell of ashes.

**Author's Note:**

> hey! thanks for reading!
> 
> if my carbonated brain lets me, im gonna write a part 2 to this .. eventually, set in hl2 :) gayer this time
> 
> field in a void scene and some lines influenced Heavily by [bbno$'s music video: Gone ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItqP57SEZJw&ab_channel=bbno%24)


End file.
